Okay. A student just wrote me an impassioned defense of Eastwood’s “Million $ Baby,” deploring how its complex character study has been turned into mere politics. He makes a reasonable case, but I wrote him back a rant about disabilities on film and… well, I am curious how others might respond.
I’m too lazy to change much about my email to him, so cut/pasted:
About the disability thing. I get your point about ignoring the complexity of a film, reading away its characterizations under the harsh arc light of some political sensibility which eradicates all shading and subtlety. But when depictions of a certain kind of character or identity rarely transcend a very, very limited set of representational options, it’s hard to see a film’s “complexity.”
A corollary example: Jim, in _Huck Finn_, is a great, great, complex character. He’s ALSO a racist cartoon of black identity. His depiction complicates an American tradition of minstrelizing black people, but it never escapes the (dull) limitations of the minstrel figure. If I am responsible about reading the book, I try to get a handle on how it works in both ways: how even great complex characters nonetheless fall into recognizable conventions, and how even recognizable stereotypes can display substantive and complex contradictions which might help unsettle the stereotype. But even a complex portrayal, when put out in a relative vacuum where the ONLY kinds of portrayals are greatly limited to a few reductive possibilities, can be unsatisfactory.
Disabilities are portrayed on film in about 4 ways. One, they are lovable and comic and show the deep heart and human side of some non-disabled protagonist. Two, they are lovable and tragic and show the deep heart and human side of some non-disabled protagonist. Three, they are inspiring and show us all something about universal human truths, as we watch the disabled protagonist overcome his/her disabilities. Four, some non-disabled protagonist grapples with deep existential crisis because s/he becomes disabled; often, that person “overcomes” their disability, but sometimes they don’t and they have to kill themselves, because it’s better to die with your sense of self intact than to grapple with a ‘loss’ of self, and disability is being less than fully a self.
My scorn for these representations does get challenged. I liked “Rain Man,” in many many ways. It’s also a dull, destructive caricature of living with disability, and of autism in particular, and it follows at least two of the above cliches. I’d bet I will find “Million$Baby” to be both, a strong character study AND a cliche-ridden deployment of dull, politically-nauseating representations. And when I say politically-nauseating, I would say that aesthetically-nauseating will be a complementary reaction; it’s as dull aesthetically to see a tough fighting young whippersnapper despondently seeking to die rather than live in a body she can’t control as it is politically aggravating. Yawn.
I’m starved–STARVED–for some other representational possibility. I LOVE the Farrelly brothers’ comedies–because there are always lots of people with disabilities just around in the background, because the portrayals of more central characters use disability (like all human, bodily functions) as ripe comic material for silliness (and not just inspiration), because these disabled characters don’t just reject stereotypes or fight against them, they somehow don’t even recognize the social assumptions they’re up against. (See “Stuck on You”–I think it’s as challenging and complex a depiction of disability as has been made recently. It’s also NOT a deep, complex film. But its representational sensibilities run so counter to convention… it’s really damn interesting.) “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” was really damn good at portraying a character with disability, rather than a character who was nothing but a disability. And “The Waterdance” was an incredible rarity, a film about becoming disabled that didn’t see that as mere plot device to signify deep existential tragedy. And “How’s Your News?” is a fine funny documentary which, in a complicated way, doesn’t just represent the disabled but lets some folks represent themselves. But the pickings are slim. It’s all Beautiful I Am Rain Sam’s Left Foot Whose Life Anyway bullshit.
you make some interesting points–we’ll be seeing “million dollar weepy” this week–i’ll let you know how far any of this applies.
went to see/hear rushdie talk tonight. you’ll be glad to know that his analysis of “million dollar baby” is essentially identical to yours (though he has seen it). he called it banal, boring and predictable; not even good, he said, in comparison to eastwood’s own best (as per rushdie, “pale rider”, “high plains drifter” and “unforgiven”). but he fears that being a “cripple movie” it is a shoo-in for the oscar. this state of affairs he used to illustrate his argument (in response to a question about television etc.) that if you give people 9th rate stuff long enough they begin to think 3rd rate is great.
Rushdie’s comments get us back to Mike’s point about the Farrelly brothers. Do they make “cripple films”? And is the “cripple film” a new genre, like the “melodrama of the unknown woman”? We could take Mike’s comments and say that the “cripple film” has a relatively stable set of thematic concerns: 1) This disabled person is lovable and comic and shows the deep heart and human side of some non-disabled protagonist (“Rain Man”). 2) S/he is lovable and tragic and shows the deep heart and human side of some non-disabled protagonist (“The Elephant Man,” Bogdanovich’s “Mask”). 3) S/he is inspiring and shows us all something about universal human truths, as we watch the disabled protagonist overcome her/his disabilities (“Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Miracle Worker,” “My Left Foot”) 4) Some non-disabled protagonist grapples with deep existential crisis because s/he becomes disabled; often, that person “overcomes†his/her disability, but sometimes s/he doesn’t and s/he has to kill her/himself, because it’s better to die with one’s sense of self intact than to grapple with a ‘loss’ of self, and disability is being less than fully a self (“Waterdance,” “Whose Life is it Anyway?” and “Million Dollar Baby”). But where do we put the Farrely brothers’ films? “Stuck on You” could be put into the 4th category, but the film also ends with the idea that the disabled body is the best body, the comfortable, full and complete body. Not quite a nice fit in #3, since “universal truths” about bodies are precisely what the Farrelly’s are taking aim at. #1 and #2 don’t seem to work either. Oh what fun this is! Any thoughts? Gotta go.
Gosh, Mike . . . imagine what kind of calculating response you will have when you actually see the film! Reducing M$B to a “disabilities film” is beneath you and the charms as well as the cliches of the this small, winning character study. Are you becoming the academic equivalent of Michael Medved?
OK I’ll put my money where my mouth is because I’ve actually seen the film and work hard not to be so damned clever and reductive when I talk about films that engage me on a variety of levels. But first . . . if viewers think My Left Foot lacks depth and complexity (as well as a character who’s more repellent than redemptive) then I guess Mike’s criteria for the perfect “disabilities film” leaves room for nothing . . . except the Farrelly Brothers . . . hmmm. OK, What to say about M$B? I was very moved by it but retain a strong ambivalance for it’s third act. There is certainly nothing drab or plodding about the film. It is in many ways a gritty throwback (a tall tale) that resists irony and pastiche, fully embracing the cliches and stereotypes of the genre and, for the most part, pushing through and transforming them into something immediate and winning. And the film looks gorgeous–the colors are deep and the rich blacks and excellent use of shadows and light provide much texture to the dramatic narrative. M$B is willing to be patient when it needs to be (there is a scene about a pair of socks that is a beauty), yet Eastwood and his colloaborators have put together a lean, tightly-constructed, powerfully visceral story. Hillary Swank is astonishing (you can’t take your eyes off her) and Eastwood gives the best performance I’ve ever seen him deliver. There is so much going on in his eyes–the way he looks at other characters. The sense of world-weariness and the sparks of humor that are communicated through small, carefully chosen gestures. Indeed, what makes this film so successful, most of the time, is the attention to detail. Cliches and stereotypes should not necessarily arouse embarrassment–they are templates we understand and want to embrace, I think. Here they are redeemed and revived [revivified?] by artists willing to work diligently to make clear, specific choices. But this does lead us to the problematic third-act. There is a shift in visual tone and style that flattens out the picture as if the film is moving away from the world of myth to the plain light of day (could it be an allegory). I guess that may be the point. It’s not that I was angered by the “twist” (I was definitely emotionally involved by that point) but I thought the execution of this dramatic narrative did not live up to the film’s first two acts. The climactic scene did not resonate for me the way I wanted (or needed) it to and that was too bad. Anyway. I went in expecting something lumpish and while there are problems (the semi-retarded wannabe, the cafe in the middle of nowhere, the unwillingness to make the audience work harder in the film’s final scenes) I could also point to similar problems in every other “great” film I have seen this year (Sideways boorish round of golf being one of many). Speaking of. The white elephant in the room is Ray. Talk about your reductively innane “disabilities flick.” This was little more than a feel good Tom show and Jaime Foxx wore the dark glasses.
who is squuib? it is always nice to see someone kick reynolds’ self-satisfied ass but it is also nice to know who is doing it.
Squuib, nice salvo. In setting myself up against a text before even seeing/reading it, I’m somewhat following the lead of my mentor Arnab C, but it also serves some other purposes.
I could give a shit about M$B. I’m interested in the cultural narratives of disability. I’m not ‘reducing’ the movie to one template in a small continuum of disabilities options; I’m noting that we have this small range of disabilities options, and the film fits all too neatly in those limitations. The trumpeting of the film’s accomplishments is simply an excellent opportunity for those of us interested in the limited cultural discourse around disability to make some useful noise. And you’re precisely right about “Ray”. I haven’t seen that either, but I sense you’re right. You sound very astute, except when mocking me, when you sound ridiculous and uninformed.
I like Johnny’s take on the Farrelly Boys. Even more than a “better” body–they set up some other options: the disabled body’s ‘grotesqueness’ is simply akin to the grotesqueness (the fluids, the eruptions, the inappropriate motions and desires) of all bodies; the goal is precisely NOT to overcome and control the body, but to allow its disruption of control to resonate outward, to disrupt the social as well as the individual… and now I’ve got to run.
But more soon. And, by the by, squuib’s real name is Julius. I’ll get you, Julius!
Ah, Mike . . . unmasking already? I bet you told all the kids in your neighborhood the brains in the laboratory were nothing more than spaghetti, right? So, one more shot before I pick up the disabilities thread and disentangle it from the Bakhtinian poetics of transgression. First, I feel bad for that poor student of yours. He adores his mentor enough to make a passionate plea for a film that moved him (even if he’s earnestly reacting to nothing more than the commodity spectacle that is the Oscars®), and what does he get in return . . . a strident lecture. Should this be a place to insert one of your famous Yawns? Now, if you are really interested in injecting some useful noise into the limited cultural discourse around disability why not point to some truly fascinating performance texts: Carrie Weaver in E.R and Jed Bartlett in The West Wing (Sheen’s performance of disability this season has been remarkably subtle yet full of sound and fury). How about Macaulay Culkin’s Roland in Saved! or the character of Martin in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s Australian film Proof, or even Marcus, the character with cerebral palsy played by Leo Fitzpatrick, in Todd Solondz’ less than admirable Storytelling? Stuck On You seems like a facile example at best, probably because the Farrelly Brothers have become so damn sentimental as they march into middle age. Sure they hire authentic disabled people to appear in their films, but there is something so sweet about these characters that their grotesqueness gets lost in the cinematic love fest, and, in the end, they exist at the margins of the narrative while pretty boys like Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear learn important lessons about community and brotherhood and musical theatre. Perhaps that film might have been something else entirely if Jim Carrey and Woody Allen had signed on the dotted line (as was originally announced when the project started making some noise in cyberspace) to play the twins. Now that has subversive written all over it. What exactly do you mean by “disabilities†anyway? Is alcoholism a disability (does Miles Raymond in Sideways count? By all standards hallowed in Hollywood, Paul Giamatti’s pear-shaped body is marked as disabled, right)? Obesity? Addiction? Mental disease? Maybe M$B is simply an allegory about Hollywood—an elegy for a certain kind of film that doesn’t get made anymore, the kind of film killed off by a heavy dose of CGI adrenaline shot straight to the heart of the consuming public. And Arnab . . . isn’t more fun to have a lurker skulking around this message board . . . ah, er, blog than someone with a name? I’m squuib, you’re arnab; call me Ishmael.
squuib, your views intrigue me, i would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
re mike and his response to his student: mike’s always been a bully. how he mocked me in my first semester of grad school (me, fresh off my singapore airlines flight, awed by everything american, naive, stars in my eyes etc.) when i said i liked “weekend at bernie’s 2”. he made a good case about it not being the searing allegory of late capitalism that i’d thought it was, but did he need to be such an asshole about it?
or maybe he just isn’t condescending to his student but instead engaging with him as an intellectual peer? why pity this student you haven’t met and whose personality you know nothing about? unless, of course you are this student. in which case i will sign a petition to have reynolds fired.
I would love to condescend to this student, but he would have none of that. We had a fine, fiery debate.
And speaking of lectures, squuibby…
“Proof,” though, is damn good.
Let me go on record and say that Mike Reynolds is a kind and generous man and a warm and thoughtful educator. In the movie of his life, producers would need to find an actor who balanced the firey, intellectual provocations of the 1970s Jack Nicholson with the comic vulnerability exhibited by Robin Williams in his less treacly roles. And I would probably add a bit of late-career Robert De Niro to account for the performative bluster–Mike’s bark is stronger than his bite. There is something about the teacher/student dynamic that at its best is shaped by a certain form of masochism. I suspect, if I were Mike’s student, I would enjoy being put in my place with such a forceful e-mail. I would see it as a sign of approval. And he’s a fantabulous daddy to Max, but I digress.
aaar squuiby! i liked you better when you were being evil to mike. though how evil can we be to a sap who “wept like a fucking baby” while watching “time of the wolf”? what does “wept like a fucking baby” signify anyway? i’ve never heard those self-centered blobs cry in anything but an annoying, “look at me, i’m so important” kind of way.
so, you’re a colleague at hamline? i am embarassed by my oh so conventional quest for identity–especially since i spend all week telling sceptical students about the pleasures of fragmentation. you don’t need to tell me who you are, just tell me some juicy stories about mike.
I suppose it is better than saying he fucked like a weeping baby. but anyhoo, notice how the villains in the James Bond movies always have some kind of disability. plus they’re queer in some way–or at least asexual unlike our model of bodily integrity James who can get it up even under the worst circumstances. character=body. if you’re crippled, at least knock us out with your soulfulness. perhaps an antidote is Freaks where the arrogant slinky blonde gets turned into chicken woman by the unsentimentalized circus folk? by the way, what is Hamline–some kind of low-cal ham substitute?
speaking of chicken-woman, the kids in the hall’s chicken lady may represent everything mike and john would like to see in “freak”/disability narratives. “chicken lady loves life!”
Ah Chicken Lady.
Frisoli, don’t tell people how I fuck. That’s between us and the Courvoisier.
The nice thing about a generic template is that it allows such invigorating discussion about exceptions, about the categories, about whether a given film really should be in a given category, and so on. Yes, they’re reductive, but not in a conclusive fashion; i.e., I don’t say, once I’ve set my genre up, this film fits in A, end of story, good night. Ideally, the conversation is simply re-valued; instead of talking about fights and fight pictures and classical Hollywood style and empathy for the downtrodden and the beaten-back and old guys and white trash girls and kindly black narrators, we’re talking about cultural problems around bodies.
We could do some very interesting things once the discussion’s shifted: like, it is intriguing to think about Hilary Swank’s body, across her films. She doesn’t fall neatly into current classifications of the beautiful starlet; she broke into consciousness playing a man, her body explicitly covered up and out of sight. When she shows up in this film, all buff, we get yet again a play with femininity and masculinity in her bodily performance, and we “can’t take our eyes off her”… and yet that body (like Brandon Teena’s) is destroyed at film’s end…
I’m not going anywhere here, just riffing. But look what we could do.
And certainly it’s a useful cult-studies trick to say: hey, look at how the culture is reductive about category or narrative X. Whether looking at our constructions of the child or our conceptions of the disabled, having a narrowed squint helps us to see points of commonality which are worth challenging. I know, Squuib, you’re with me on this. But the easiest (and therefore most tedious) response to such purposeful reductions is to dismiss them as mere reduction. Certainly there can be bad deployments of a critical reductionism, but just as certainly those moves can be useful.
And, for the record, I am a wonderful human being. When I weep like a baby, babies stop and say–so, that’s how it’s done. Israelis hug Palestinians, and Palestinians accept the hug, even though they feel a little awkward and uncertain. I’m so damn sensitive, with such nuances of empathy and awareness, that I should have my own television show. People would come to me and I would hear them. They would be heard. Is that so wrong?
Yeah, Mike I’m with you 100% Still, when you see it floating out there in the world wide web you just want to take the piss. Plus, I finally got my opportunity to infiltrate and so I took it!